Is Starbound truly sci-fi?

Why justify stuff in some scientific ways when everything works fine already?

 

Do they offer any explanation whatsoever for their FTL? Most FTL drives in science fiction are bogus and just a way to sidestep the light speed limit that would interfere with their plot.
As for coal and such, we also carry literal tons of stone in our pockets. Its a game mechanic, nothing more.

 

Because it matters to the reader? I can't explain why if you don't get it. It's just a thing... Like... Idk, if you're reading a mystery book, the killer at the end has to be someone who was introduced at least once in the book before. If the killer can always be someone we've never seen in the book before, than it renders the whole point moot... "Was it nurse? The maid? The cook? No it was mutants from planet Xignu... again. Thanks for reading this B.S. mystery book."

Stories have to have a certain structure to them that you can easily identify, so that you can leave it feeling satisfied? Uh, does that make sense? Idk. Call me a nerd or whatever, but if the spaceship is moving between galaxies in a matter of minutes I gotta know if it's a wormhole drive, or if it's running on an engine made of dark matter, or whatever.

*Whoooosh* In a hard sci-fi story, if you don't explain it, it's magic. That's the point. If your reader has to guess what your machines run on, you've already lost. (Also, I like to think that when you break something, the matter manipulator deconstructs it to a computer file, and then reconstructs it when you need to place it. Nothing in my pockets. If I were making a hard sci-fi overhaul I'd put that in there too!)

I think you guys may have missed my point a bit, I don't think there's anything wrong with Starbound at all, and it's clearly sci-fi... It's just not as sci-fi as it could be. I'm playing the game, and waiting for the mod... What's your beef with me?

 

Right now, I'd say it's about as sci-fi as those Star Trek episodes in which the crew of the Enterprise find themselves on a planet with pseudo-medieval societies.

And actually, the presence of pickaxes and other basic tools makes the game more proper (harder) sci-fi than being able to craft laser rifles and plasma cutters with your bare hands from the get-go. The fact the technological progression begins with real elements as opposed to phlebotinum, handwavium or unobtanium also further reinforces its plausibility. It's entirely sensible that you've to work hard to build the necessary infrastructure to produce "present day" (sci-fi) technology, because in the beginning you're just a punk on a small, undersupplied spaceship. It's nothing short of a miracle you can progress beyond medieval technology on your own.

 

PKD didn't write science fiction? Those tempogogic drugs didn't get much of a foundation.

Larry Niven doesn't write science fiction? There wasn't much science to explain the existence of those GP hulls.

Iain Banks doesn't write science fiction? How was the interstellar travel scientifically justified, again?

Of course, my memory may just be blanking on the explanations that were provided.

What were all those equations that justified the Foundation approach in the Asimov series?

One's personal definition of science fiction is not an objective definition of science fiction.

And let's not forget Clarke's Laws!

 

Sci Fi = Scientific Fiction

Starbound contains science that is currently fiction in the real word. Stop making dumb threads.

 

Exactly. Its not hard sci-fi. Its soft-sci fi, which means you don't need much of an explanation for anything, just do things that a re recognizable techy.

Asimov high-five

 

I don't know how to address this question besides with a simple, Yes.

It has cyborg people... Sci-fi.

 

And I said that's 100% fine.

Go look at my post, I said exactly that, man... Starbound IS sci-fi. They DON'T need to explain any of that stuff. OP was wrong. I said all of that in my very first post...

The only other thing I said was that I'm waiting for a (maybe not super hard sci-fi, but at least medium level.) mod to bring the game in line with my personal tastes.

To Aachen, I have not read/watched all of those stories, but if they are even moderately hard sci-fi, those things were either explained, or did not have to be explained because other common technologies were explained.

You do not have to explain to your audience how a laser gun works, if you have medical tables that cure almost all illnesses with an aggressive nanobot injection. Nanobots and laser technology don't go hand in hand, but suspension of disbelief is not broken when a laser gun is introduced because underlying technologies of robotics being improved to such a level would allow for the advancement of general technologies of the era. For example, if Starbound were to say that the Matter Manipulator can deconstruct and reconstruct matter to level where you can store an entire house to the size of a pellet, and put it back together again exactly the same way, then they wouldn't need to explain how the ship is powered by coal, because one could assume that it works in some similar way to turn the coal into something else. Or at the very least, split the atoms in the coal into little mini nuclear explosions, and then compressing the size of those explosions, and exploding again, yadda yadda, science.

Why does all of this matter? It don't. I'd just like for it to be there. (It does not have to be there, I like Starbound just fine, it is sci-fi, etc., etc.)

 

Fantasy... sci-fi... sci-fi IS fantasy. What matters is that Starbound's one hella good game, not whether it's sci-fi or hard rock or champagne.

 

It IS sci-fi.Everything in it is based in the future-the "medieval" things you might refer to are glitch stuff,but they have a pretty sci-fi explaination.Also,there are a lot of glowy swords that can be called sci-fi....The dragon could be something that the glitch did.Pretyy much anything else needs no explaination,then,seriously.

 

I hate people who seem to think Sci-fi has to have an explanation for why things exist, especially when Star Trek had a list of made up words they would use in the script for things to sound more sciency, they had no idea what the hell those things did, the fact of the matter is that the those things weren't just chopped down to being magic. Another example would be the Bioshock series, which is considered science fiction, yet almost all the things in the game have little to no explination, Plasmids and Vigors were these odd chemical that somehow gave humans super powers, and lets not even get into the whole multiverse thing.

Regardless, Starbound will only become fantasy at the moment it explains things as being magic in nature, and even then it can be both Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

 

What happens when it incorporates science and magic? I've always called that genre Magi-punk or simply Sci-fi/Fantasy.

 

I like to call it science fantasy.

 

I've heard places call it "Science Fantasy", but I guess the term depends on what you want to call them.

 

There's science it in. Case closed.

 

Seems really arbitrary to say that hard science fiction only requires some elements to have adequate scientific underpinnings. Where's the line drawn?

And that sounds like pretty soft fiction, at least to me. There's been no concomitant advance in cryogenic brain preservation simply because we have fMRI machines. We have developed more compact laser technology, and still lack fusion reactors. "Nanobots" require, as it stands, some pretty broken physics to approach anything like the sort of application that, for example, a Chula medical ship employs them for.

And that doesn't bother me. I personally think that various fiction falls on a spectrum WRT "hard" vs. "soft."

Non sequitur isn't really adequate for me. Suspension of disbelief doesn't, for me at least, mean I can handwave the existence of currently impossible (or improbable) technology because an unrelated technology is also far in advance of what we currently can construct. Rather, I suspend disbelief because I accept the narrative necessity of the relevant technologies.

Hard sci-fi certainly strives to use a foundation of quasi-scientific ideas and actual science for the relevant technology where in softer sci-fi "It just works." And really, for example, just saying the MM can do a thing is not demonstrating a scientific underpinning to it working that way. How deep should explanations go before they're "hard" enough?

Niven's Ringworld, AFAIR, actually has addenda to deal with errors in data and theory that the author was either mistaken on, or unaware of, at time of first publication.

I basically agree. I accept FTL-via-coal because that's part of the story. I could ad-hoc explanations aplenty if it really bothered me.

Maybe the skeledragon just needs to be reskinned? Would mechadragon be more fitting? Or mechafireship (a la ancient naval combat)?

 

I'm pretty sure Science Fiction encompasses a wide variety of futuristic weapons and/or technology. So yeah they might be general expectations but they refer to science fiction elements.

 

I would call Starbound sci-fi. Really, really soft sci-fi. Currently even softer than Star Wars perhaps.

Hard sci-fi rewrites as few real-life rules as possible, and then they rigidly adhere to their new rules; Starbound breaks so many rules and barely justifies any of them. I am willing to suspend my disbelief to enjoy a setting. It's when I have to constantly suspend it that immersion is broken.

Anachronisms are all well and fun. But when there are too many of them, I start to wonder if I'm playing a fantasy game with a fancy level select screen.

The problem is not about having fantastic, unexplained elements. It's about having too many.

 

And I, disagree.

So... Yeah. If you're fine with Starbound as it is, awesome?

I am too, but I'm still gonna wait for that mod. I have no idea what the argument is or isn't about, but I've already said the game doesn't have to be changed. I'm all out of different ways I can say "I don't think Starbound is hard enough sci-fi, personally, but it's still definitely sci-fi, and doesn't have to be change at all by the game creators."

If you want me to say I lost the argument you're having, then you win. Starbound is the hardest hard sci-fi that has ever been hard.